VeteranNewcomer

They cannot control pricing for their partners, but they provide or withhold incentives for them to work hard in order to match a desired price point at least for a certain period of time.

I guess there are always deals going on beneath the surface regardless whether they are called Tier 0, GitG, GPP or don't have a name at all. While generally not being desireable for the consumer, some do have their benefits like low launch prices, quality control wrt to fan noise and generally sufficient board design to provide enough and stable power to the GPU.

Sapphire basically IS a gaming brand for AMD already (as much as Zotac is for Nvidia, just look up their parent company). From the other mixed AIBs, at least Asus already has a strong gaming brand (ROG) and could continue to sell AMD cards under their own name. Gigabyte is working towards this as well with Aorus, only MSI is lacking in this regard with only different branches like Gaming, Lightning etc.

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Although Sapphire like I said is the Global Distributor for FirePro (who know where Vega Founders Edition fits with distribution), the Reference design partner, and one of the senior partners for custom embedded solutions and is involved in some solutions between AMD and other 3rd parties in this segment.
It is more than just a gaming brand for AMD but yeah it is the perceived one for gamers due to the heavy marketing and launch availability (such as at OverclockersUK).
For Nvidia I would had thought EVGA would had been more of a perceived brand than Zotac.

That said only two companies for Nvidia could develop and of sorts release (at least able to get hold of these signed drivers but not through broader-general channels) custom driver for Pascal that went well above the 1.1V; Galax and Asus and only designed for their very top tier model - I have seen the downloads for these in the past.
As you say there is always some kind of tiering going but for now it is not well structured to be universal, not saying it would apply to drivers but is an example of current relationships with Nvidia in specific areas, which would also apply to AMD beyond Sapphire.

Legend

As long as the drivers aren't catching the video cards on fire, do they really matter that much anymore?

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Apparently yes - even more than the possibility of catching fire
(one still sees people saying how NVIDIA drivers are so much better than AMD despite the fact that NVIDIA is the only one with several different driver revisions setting cards on fire)

VeteranRegular

Although Sapphire like I said is the Global Distributor for FirePro (who know where Vega Founders Edition fits with distribution), the Reference design partner, and one of the senior partners for custom embedded solutions and is involved in some solutions between AMD and other 3rd parties in this segment.

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Is that an exclusive partnership by contract or just the only one, therefore making it exclusive?

Apparently yes - even more than the possibility of catching fire
(one still sees people saying how NVIDIA drivers are so much better than AMD despite the fact that NVIDIA is the only one with several different driver revisions setting cards on fire)

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Or when a new API update such as Vulkan 1.1 lands AMD has driver support unlike Nvidia.

Wasn't the catching on fire thing a PCIe issue? Where the AMD cards that didn't adhere to the spec we're a fire hazard and the Nvidia cards that did "safe" despite catching on fire? Or were more cards catching fire and I missed it?

Legend

Just wanted to add, Jason Evangelho only regurgitated what Damien Triolet (the technical marketing manager at AMD) already stated a while back.

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Thanks for that information, I hadn't been aware and it's actually quite useful/interesting and gives me some more threads to tug at. Appreciated.

As for Sapphire, they've been in a special relationship with ATi before AMD bought them. AMD doesn't make their own cards, any AMD or ATi reference cards are Sapphire. It's been that way as long as I can remember.

LegendVeteranSubscriber

I don't agree with that position AT ALL and bloody hate it! The idea that someone who knows anything about hardware can say with a straight face that running it full speed 24/7 won't age the hardware prematurely is just beyond ridiculous to me, at best it's a real reach.

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There are plenty of studies regarding the ageing of electrolytic capacitors (usually the first ones to go). IIRC, most of them have a lifespan of >80 000 hours at nominal (or lower) values for voltage, current and temperature. That's 9 years of continuous operation.
Theoretically, the "full speed 24/7" usage on GPUs won't be causing any real problems if the GPU is being used in a home setup with a proper case, decent power supply and normal room temperature.
Well before we reach those 9 years (well before we reach half of that, probably), the arrival of new hardware that will greatly increase mining performance will also increase mining difficulty and make the current GPUs non-profitable for mining.

What is bound to fail are the moving parts of the graphics card (fans and water pumps in the case of liquid cooled models) because those have a life expectancy of about 10 - 20 000 hours, so about 1-2 years of continuous operation.
Again, this is in the case of a home setup.

In fact, if I had to guess, many overclocked+overvolted cards that are used 1h/day may have their lifetime quite a bit more shortened than cards in standard setups being used for mining 24/7. Even more if we consider that most hobbyist miners end up being underclocking+undervolting their cards to spend less energy and make more money.

Now industrial mining farms is a whole other issue. In there, we don't know in what conditions the cards are kept, and I'd bet they're not very concerned in keeping hundreds of cards working together in a room temperature below 30ºC. They might have those working on rooms at 50-60 ºC or more, and that might put the electrolytic capacitors working at well above the ~100ºC most of them are rated to work at.

That said, IMHO it's reasonably safe to recommend mining for home users who have capable hardware at their house as 24/7 mining won't cause substantial harm to their systems. The cards will probably become unprofitable for mining well before they surpass their practical lifetime as gaming cards, and the fans that might fail earlier are usually easy and cheap to replace.
Moreover, it's not like hobbyist miners who have 1 or 2 graphics cards laying around in their house are screwing up the GPU market, as those probably even bought the cards before the mining craze swept the world stock in late 2017.. so no real harm is being done here.

Now what I would not recommend is to purchase 2nd-hand cards from mining farms, for the reasons listed above. When farm miners start selling their current cards, I would definitely stay away from those. And they should be rather easy to spot, as they'll probably appear on ebay with stocks in the hundreds/thousands.

Legend

I've had the memory go out on cards before, it's how my 9700 pro finally died. Also, it doesn't seem that long ago to me that capacitors weren't all all that reliable and I have a feeling some manufacturers still go a bit cheap with them at times. (Just a personal fear, no data to back it up.)

VeteranRegular

I contacted Nvidia this morning to try and get some clarification on the matter and I was pointed towards a post on PCGamesN, which explains the exclusivity clause a bit better. Essentially, Nvidia wants partners to have a gaming brand that is aligned with GeForce, but it isn’t stopping those partners from creating a second gaming brand for AMD/Radeon graphics cards.

LegendVeteranSubscriber

Uh huh, and of course it's cleared up after the case and through other weird channels but apparently couldn't be clarified directly to Kyle well before he released the article after he tried several times to do so.

Newcomer

Why is this thread kind of hidden in the "PC Gaming" section, instead of being in the "Graphics and Semiconductor Industry" section ? That is a much more "visible" place and, in my opinion atleast, where it belongs.

Also surprised that this issue has not been discussed more, considering the ramifications this could have.

LegendVeteranSubscriber

Why is this thread kind of hidden in the "PC Gaming" section, instead of being in the "Graphics and Semiconductor Industry" section ? That is a much more "visible" place and, in my opinion atleast, where it belongs.

Also surprised that this issue has not been discussed more, considering the ramifications this could have.

VeteranRegular

Uh huh, and of course it's cleared up after the case and through other weird channels but apparently couldn't be clarified directly to Kyle well before he released the article after he tried several times to do so.

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Or to each independent source directly with an official statement instead of referencing another journalist/forum that may or may not have got it right and certainly wouldn't be legally binding.

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